Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

NTC Reflections: The Networked Nonprofit

Photo by Geoff Livingston

My goal for conference presenting moving forward is to be on panels that I have designed or co-designed and that design involves the audience beyond a 5 minute q/a at the end. I realized that I enjoy presenting at sessions when the audience gets to share their knowledge with the room and each other. I really think that it is much more effective for learning than talking heads or expert brain dump.

Also, I will ask for rooms that have more space and wireless mics are not negotiable. These are important technical details that make it easy to involve the audience in the conversation.   What I hate most about conference presentation set ups is that the speakers are up on a stage behind a podium and separate from the audience.

Allison Fine and I did a session called The Networked Nonprofit that we designed.  We covered the themes in our soon to be published book, The Networked Nonprofit, and engaged the audience in a conversation about these themes.   Here's an interview with did with Holly Ross prior to the session.

Networked Nonprofit Slides

View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

One of the best things about doing sessions at the NTC is that I know so many people in the audience and can call them out to share their experience.   The other wonderful thing is that Amy Sample Ward and  Peggy Duvette were in the audience live blogging and I'm so grateful for their notes.  (Thank you!)   Also, a huge thanks to Geoff Livingston who took fabulous photos! 

We started with a little skit, loosely based on the PC/MAC commercials about how our styles are so different.  Collaboration is hard and even harder when you don't write, think, or have the same tone.  It may be easier to write a book alone, but a collaborative effort can produce something rich.   I was worried about our different presentation styles - not to mention how we prepare differently - but we had great chemistry!  Pretty good for only being in the room together one time before and presenting together for the first time!

On the content side,  I was surprised to hear the responses to the simplicity exercise - what could your organization do less of?    Meetings was a big one, followed by worry!

Shawn, a passionate free agent fundraiser and video blogger, was in the room.  I first encountered "Uncultured" through his work on Blog Action Day.   He stood up and talked about how wants to work with nonprofits and later blogged about the session.   One of the points we made in the book is how nonprofits need to work with free agent fundraisers, but I also think that free agent fundraisers should also learn ways to approach nonprofits in a less confrontational way.  Nonetheless, I will thrilled to see people in the room hand Shawn cards.

Oh, the book comes out in late June, but you can pre-order at a good discount on Amazon.

My Three Words for 2010

Last year, I used Chris Brogan's "Three Words" to set some professional/personal goals for the year.   The process is simple:

Think of how you want to be successful in 2009.  Then, try to think in even broader terms. Extrapolate on the broader terms, and find one word to hang the idea on.

In 2009, my three words were: Streamline, Weave, and Einstein. In looking back at what I set out for myself, I realized that I accomplished a lot.  However, I think I miserably failed at streamlining!  I think because streamlining is about scarcity thinking, not the abundance of working in a networked way.  

2010 is going to be a fantastic year and have lots of ideas, projects, and people that I'm excited to be working with (more about that later).   For now, let me share briefly these words/concepts.

Photo by Cobalt 123

Networked:   Networks of people or organizations - is something that I've been looking at deeply during 2009 as part of my work at the Packard Foundation as Visiting Scholar.  The word "Networked" is the second word  in the title of the forthcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit,  I co-wrote with Allison Fine during 2009.  I plan to continue thinking and writing about the ideas and themes we cover in the book, but also focus on how the practice of a networked nonprofit.

Some of the themes include:

• Change management and issues like social productivity related to the adoption of a "social culture" in an organization
• Organizational simplicity and working in networked ways.
• Movement Building, network weaving, and connectedness
• Working with crowds and the art of  transparency
• Relationship building, engagement techniques, and building social capital
• Experimentation, reflection, and learning
• Social media metrics, and ROI

Photo by Temari09

Generosity:   The definition of generosity is the habit of giving freely or spending time or money for others, without being rewarded in return. Generosity is the pure intention of looking out for society's common good and giving from the heart. Generosity reflects your passion to help others.   This both a value and goal of my blogging work - to share learning about how to use social media effectively and as an extension learning about what networked nonprofits do. 

In this spirit, I will continue learn in public.  I will continue to share case studies and guest posts by others,  my own processes - especially training techniques (particularly incorporating social media) and presentations, and will continue to book giveaways as appropriate.

I am also very curious about the new meaning of generosity as it relates to social media and connectedness. I am interested in looking at the whole evolving area from fundraising2.0  and the rise of freeagent fundraising. 

I'm also interested in diving deeper into the concept "Lethal Generosity," a term coined by Shel Israel and how it is used by the for-profit sector to create cause marketing campaigns or just plain marketing campaigns. 

Photo by Pink Sherbert

Full of Life:  This phrase will be a guiding principle in 2010 for me both professionally and personally.  On the personal side, it means sustaining curiosity, leaving time for serendipity, exploring sandboxes, balancing getting things done with making stuff happen, and following my passion for learning.

My 53rd birthday is just around the corner and I'll be celebrating it with a fundraiser and full of life!

What are your three words for 2010?

Can Social Network Analysis Help You Improve Your Social Media Strategy?

2009 - Connected Action - Marc Smith - Social Media Network Analysis

View more presentations from Marc Smith.

In  our book, The Networked Nonprofit, co-authored with Allison Fine, we provide an overview of mapping your social network in Twitter and other sites using some of the social network analysis tools available.  

As someone who loves to play with analytics, visuals, maps, and other geekery, I've been wanting to explore in more depth the how-to and the techniques.   To take my learning deeper on  social network analysis and mapping techniques and how they can be applied them to a social media strategy, I took a workshop with Marc Smith.  He is a self-described "Internet Sociologist" and developer of NodeXL. The workshop was organized by colleague, Tatyana Kanzavelli

This FREE software works as an add-on template in Excel, allows you import data from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Email and create social network analysis maps.  It doesn't require that you know a programming language, although you need to understand the basic vocabularly of social network analysis and how to translate this to your social media strategy.   After all, data is only as good as it is actionable!   Otherwise, you waste a lot of time creating meaningless, but cool maps.

What I liked best about this workshop and the instructor is that it wasn't on the software features. He gave context of social network analysis, explained the value proposition for using it to help you make social media strategy improvements, and walked us through some examples in the software.  I learned a lot but need to spend more time with the tool and terminology - and apply it to a real world situation.

What I'd love to see is a cheat sheet that maps out the technical social analysis terms with strategy tactics so you knew which analysis run to make what decisions.  Or, a guide to before/after maps so you could see how visualizing your network helped you improve strategy.  

I loved getting context in workshops and Marc didn't disappoint.  For example, I learned that the first ever social networking analysis map was created by Jacob Moreno. It looked at the relationships between players on a football team. Who liked each other, who didn't.  Apparently this team chemistry is important to winning.

My notes:

• People are using social media for social interaction and leaving what Eugene Eric Kim called "ant trails."  Social networking analysis can track those interactions (replies, commenting, like, etc) and help you make decisions with your strategy.

• Without social networking analysis, it's like a weatherman trying to predict a snowstorm without seeing a whole weather map.   It gives you a 10,000 view of your ecosystem.   Without this visualization, it's like three blind men touching the elephant.  There's too much unstructured data (comments, replies, likes, etc) - you need to see a picture or map.

• When you map your network, it tells you a story.  Who is connected to whom?  How are they interacting?  Where are the clusters?   Who are the influencers? Who are the bridge builders between clusters? Who is in the edges?  Who isn't connected? Who should I spend my time responding to and cultivating?   The analysis looks at frequency of interaction, relationship structure (two-way, one-way), and helps reveal structural similarities.

• An individual's online social behavior and connections can be looked at against social networking analysis characteristics and different profiles or roles are then created.  He showed an example of this in an online community SNA and pointed out the lurkers, conversation starters, trolls, based on particular patterns in the map. 

• He covered social network analysis 101 and key metrics including  centrality, cohesion, density, and betweeness.   That last one, "betweeness" describes how long the path is between people. There is great power and responsibility in the people have high betweeness.   To illustrate this, he showed a social network analysis based on voting record of senators.  Not surprisingly, it clusters into two groups, plus there a few senators who ranked high in "betweeness."  Can you guess who they are?

• Social network analysis help you figure out who, where, how much, and how people in your network are connected.   Seeing these relationships in aggregate helps you make decisions.

How are you using social network analysis concepts to help guide your decisions in social media strategy for external communications?   Have some examples? Share them in the comments.

Win A Book: Help Us Pick A Sub-Title for Our Book, The Networked Nonprofit

Allison Fine and I just submitted the manuscript to the book we've working on for the past 9 months!  It has a title, "The Networked Nonprofit."   But now our publisher, J Wiley, says we need a sub-title.  We got some guidance on how to think about a sub title:

Put yourself in the shoes of potential buyers who don’t know either of you and are looking for some answers, solutions, a new perspective, etc. What’s the end result besides social change, what does the book help the reader or org do?

Ah, so a sub-title is designed to sell books.   Would this work?

How To Use Social Media To Raise Millions of Dollars for Your Nonprofit  Without Any Investing Any Time or Effort

But, seriously, that isn't what the book is about.   We brainstormed a few sub-titles, but I think all you, dear readers, may have some terrific ideas.

So, help us out.  Here's a link to a brief survey that has a brief description, a couple of sub-titles and a space to add your own.    If we end up using your sub-title, you'll get a free book.